Gay Marriage Tactics

Phoenix, AZ – Kyrsten Sinema, chair of the campaign to defeatProposition 107, said the strategy was to show straightcouples who would lose their domestic partner benefits.That's because the initative would not only haveconstitutionally barred gay marriage but also precludedgovernments from providing benefits to the partners oftheir workers, gay or straight.

(The fact is that in Arizona there are 112,000unmarried couples. About 18,000 of those are same-sexcouples. And those numbers are pretty consistentthroughout the country, 1 in 10. That makes sense.)

She said that means more straight couples would beaffected than gays. Sinema said Prop 107 wasn't a gayissue because same-sex marriage already is illegal inArizona, a law upheld by the Court of Appeals. But foesnever mentioned the initiative also would bar a courtfrom ruling that gays are entitled to the same legalrights as married couples, allowing them to form civilunions. That issue never has been addressed by Arizonacourts -- meaning that with the apparent defeat ofProposition 107 it remains a legal option. Whether themeasure really is dead remains unsettled: While thelatest tally shows it losing by about 30,000 votes,there are still more than a quarter million ballotsuncounted in Maricopa County alone.